Matt Long had life by the horns—until the day he got crushed by a 20–ton bus. Though the firefighter and Ironman suffered horrific injuries, he somehow survived. Then he had to learn to live again.

Flynn and Carino sense something, and they move closer to Long, making sure passing runners can't knock him over. As they enter Central Park, a wisecrack from someone gets little response from Long. With less than three miles to go, he finally barks, "No more jokes." The only noise that breaks the silence is Long grunting every few seconds.

In February 2008, Long flew to Tempe, Arizona. He'd wanted to escape New York City for a while, to "someplace where people didn't know me as the guy who got hit by a bus." He'd found a rehab center that seemed suited to "getting me running."

The two trainers he worked with, Mark D'Aloisio and Kyle Herrig, use an approach that relies less on isolating individual muscles and more on getting muscle groups to work in sync. Their clients range from members of the Arizona Diamondbacks to senior citizens recovering from hip surgery. For three months the trainers put Long through daily 90-minute sessions geared at firing up dormant muscles and building strength. He also swam and lifted weights at a nearby gym. The work paid off quickly. After about six weeks, he wasn't using the cane as much, and he was putting more weight on his right leg. "His confidence was getting better," says Herrig, "and that's when we decided that we'd go out and do a little jog."

Around noon on March 14, along a canal path in Phoenix, Long, with D'Aloisio and Herrig at his side, ran his first mile in two years. It took him 17 minutes, 24 seconds. "I can look at it two ways," he wrote in an e-mail. "It's 17:24 faster than any mile in the last two years or 1:30 slower than my best 5-K. Either way I'm running!"

A few weeks later, he returned to New York and saw Jim Wharton, a sports physiologist known for his flexibility techniques. Long wanted to be taken on as a patient. On his application, where it asked for his medical condition, he simply wrote, "Fucked." When Wharton saw that, he chuckled; the two hit it right off. Long shared his plan to run the marathon that fall. That's when Wharton knew the guy was serious. "It is rare to see someone with such challenges to the body come back and try the marathon. But Matt has a great attitude," Wharton said last summer. "That makes it easy. He was an athlete before he came here, and he still is."

Over the next six months, Wharton and his staff spent hour-long sessions working with Long to improve his strength and range of motion. They concentrated on his right abductors, seeing if they could get them firing again. Wharton made no promises. In case the muscles didn't respond, they made sure muscles like Long's hamstring and quads were ready to compensate. Wharton also devised a 16-week running schedule that would gradually rebuild his cardio capacity.

It began at the Rock on July 1. Long returned to active duty with the FDNY that day after two and a half years of disability leave. While hoping that he could one day get back to his old firehouse, Long was happy to be with his training buddies and shouting orders at the probies. That afternoon, he took his lunch break at a nearby track. He asked Tommy Grimshaw to join him, and the two set out for six laps. Long, who wore a new raised shoe that compensated for his shorter right leg, gimped more than he ran, but after 24 minutes he had finished the first mile-and-a-half of his marathon plan. As they walked from the track, Grimshaw laughed and said, "Matty, I can taste the Guinness we'll be drinking after the marathon."